The Moscow dragon

[Guest paul walter]

Paul,

 

god knows I share what I can and what I know willingly, perhaps more than some people want to hear from this particular source! -- but I'm not really authorized to do that with WLP's material. There's many reasons why information from the seminar given to regular practitioners with some training and understanding in the tradition of this particular school should not randomly enter public circulation in this manner, one of them being that much of it is intimately intertwined with the practice itself and will be useless or even harmful if extracted and separated from it. There's things that I don't see as posing a great danger of misapplication (as the above brief entry re food guidelines), but I don't think I should be picking and choosing, I might just go wrong and I don't want to go wrong here.

 

Yes, I understand. I was thinking that there were perhaps 'safer' lectures-like on taoist sciences, general knowledge sorts of things, not on practices or lineage secrets neccessarily. Was there any inkling in the food talk about what happens to the body/energy of the one who has done all the requisite things to get to the 'sealed' immortal (or what ever?) stage he is at and starts eating more, or eating meat, or...? Does the body or energetic matrix adapt/change,lessen, is it simply 'sealed' and unaffected, but then why not live off of the connection that's established ...? Don't really know what to ask as it's all a mystery somewhat and not everyday conversation if you know what I mean. Thanks for imparting what you know, won't push the point any longer...lavender oil is good for headaches Paul.

[宁]

Ok, now that you've let the cats out of your post-seminar luggage things are ramping up in my mind. Is it possible at all for you to perhaps (pretty please) to , perhaps, umm, take those notes out of that 'I'll-get-around-to-it-one-day' pile and give us reports on ALL the topics discussed ??--over time of course, no hurry (can't WAIT!!). I don't wan't to speak for others (though I'm sure I am) but I imagine many would like that idea somewhat. Please don't make me have to start a spam campaign to bombard you're mailbox until you relent. Paul

 

heya paul, my thoughts exactly

 

@Taomeow, Xie Xie!

[Taomeow]

I feel a bit guilty evading direct questions about Master Wang's teachings... but there's a good reason for this... Have you ever seen those classic Chinese paintings of Dragons in Clouds that show you pretty much a skyfull of clouds, nothing more, and only if you look very closely do you notice a claw sticking out from behind one of them, a tip of the tail showing through another?.. and that's all you see of the dragon. I've been showing glimpses of Master Wang in this manner because... well, for one thing, I myself haven't seen the WHOLE dragon, though I've seen some... and for another, this very style of showing that he's there... showing glimpses through the clouds... is traditional-taoist enough for me to try to emulate.

[Guest paul walter]

I feel a bit guilty evading direct questions about Master Wang's teachings... but there's a good reason for this... Have you ever seen those classic Chinese paintings of Dragons in Clouds that show you pretty much a skyfull of clouds, nothing more, and only if you look very closely do you notice a claw sticking out from behind one of them, a tip of the tail showing through another?.. and that's all you see of the dragon. I've been showing glimpses of Master Wang in this manner because... well, for one thing, I myself haven't seen the WHOLE dragon, though I've seen some... and for another, this very style of showing that he's there... showing glimpses through the clouds... is traditional-taoist enough for me to try to emulate.

 

 

Yeah, I know the paintings-in fact i'm looking at one right now . My respect/awe for the man just went up another few notches through you not being able to tell me anything more about him!--hey, then you are right with that 'hidden dragon' theory you gave after all. . I suppose I should have asked more mundane questions like- is that shirt he is wearing in the Amsterdam seminar photos a real Lacoste or one of those faux Chinese rip-offs? All in good fun, thanks Taomeow. Paul.

[宁]

Malnourished? -- far from it. Quite robust, and the weird thing is, his weight seemed to fluctuate from day to day, but it must have been qi, not weight, in the belly -- now it's there, now it isn't. On the last day, after the seminar, I was seeing the whole departing group off and WLP looked slender -- not thin, just "in good shape" -- but during the seminar he seemed more massive... Very peculiar.

 

About his personal diet he said that while he was in training with his teachers he was a vegetarian, but coming into the world one must take on the ways of the world for balance, so he does eat a little meat now. (I susupect -- just my impression of course, I don't really know -- that he's one of those wise men who will eat what the wife cooks, with no qualms. Unlike Confucius, whose wife left him because he was always complaining about the food!)

 

He had specific instructions for the phases of the practice when one must abstain from meat, but this was related to things that, if/when they start happening, signal this. When a certain phase is reached, all so-called "blood foods" must be avoided for a number of days and these include all animal-derived foods -- meat, fish, seafood, all dairy, eggs, a few vegetables that "act like meat in the body" (not available outside some regions of China anyway), and certain fruits.

 

He said nothing at all about tofu, or if he did, it wasn't translated as such. (The lectures were being simultaneously translated into Russian, and the word "tofu" was never mentioned, but then I don't know if the word has entered the Russian language at all -- there was no tofu in Russia when I was growing up, and I don't think most people there know what it is even today.)

 

For regular lifestyles, he asserted that a taoist practitioner mustn't eat to be full and the regulating principle is hunger -- at each meal, you eat about 70% of what your "total" hunger "wants" you to eat. There's fasts and semi-fasts (liquid foods -- e.g. herbal decoctions) administered at particular times with certain stages of practice or therapeutically, but regular undereating below 70-75% is discouraged as unproductive.

 

just curious, were there regulations regarding sex? because i assume they were, thou you know how it is when people ass-u-me...

[Wayfarer64]

This has me wondering just how many weather controling dragons exist- how they interact to foster weather... how immortal are they? Do these interactions always need "deal making" to have conclusive weather etc...

 

The cosmology is astounding!

 

love to all- Pat

[NeiChuan]

Very nice, Taomeow. The place where Nan Huai-Chin resides now has a few dragons living in crystals underground.

 

Hm like this?

 

http://www.infoniac.com/environment/earths-largest-crystal-found-in-mexican-cave.html

 

When I saw that I was sorta've obligated to come back to this interesting post

[gendao]

[Ormus]

How is it posible that Wang teach Nei Dan on seminar when we know that student must to be near Master in clouse contact because problems can arise and Master need to fix it.Here I see that Wang students dont have contact with him after seminar but if they whant to see him again then need to wait that intermediary people make some seminar and student again need to give huge sum of dollars to meet him.What if problems arise in the meantime?

All students progress diferently....how he can follow 500 of them to be able to know where are they and what they need next?

 

There is talk about what he can perform but no one speak about his Yang Shen and signs of Xian he need to show like squere eyes,not eating(here someone mention that he eat meat).

 

Did some see his photo from this or last year?Is it diferent then from 2000 ?

 

Ormus

[Taomeow]

Ormus,

 

don't know about bigger seminars, but in Moscow, we were given the phone number of the senior instructor and urged to call for specific instructions if such and such events occur in the course of cultivation.  Many of the possible "side effects" were discussed in advance, and dietary recommendations (traditional and genuine, rather than pop-cultural or indigenous to some other schools or sects or practices which you seem to have expected instead) were given in a special lecture dedicated to the subject.  The vegetarian regimen, as well as a host of other restrictions, would only be necessary at the advent of particular events in cultivation, for a period specified.  

 

There's genuine masters who only teach one on one.  But you probably never heard of them, precisely for this reason.  If you find such a master, I bet it's a better deal -- let me know if you do, I'd be interested too.  I've met a top notch feng shui master once who had taught only 16 students in 30 years, and only one on one.  She was giving a public Q&A round to feng shui students of other masters and schools, of which I was one, on the request of one of her 16 disciples who also volunteered as her translator.  It was amazing and the information I got serves me to this day, but to become her 17th disciple, I would have to become fluent in Cantonese, relocate to Hong Kong, and convince her that I am worthy of her time and effort.  A bit of a conundrum.

 

Hope this helps you accept that you can't apply Platonic ideals of how taoist learning "should" happen in the perfect world to the actual world we live in, and quit picking on master Wang Liping, or any other for that matter.  It's a do or don't deal, taoism is not a compulsory education, nor an entitlement, and has never been.